With the continued progress of globalization, more corporations than ever before have work groups spread across countries and continents around the world. To support and increase the productivity of remote and telecommuting work groups, communications companies are considering more cost-effective network solutions that combine voice, wireless, data and video functionality. Businesses like these expect that the services they select and eventually implement will have call quality comparable to conventional telephone service, and they expect those services to boost productivity and reduce overall communications costs. Acquiring these desired network services requires connections from the Internet and wireless and wireline networks to Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTNs) using a flexible, robust, scalable, and cost-effective media gateway. The ability of such media gateways to reduce overall communications costs for dispersed workgroups forms the foundation for media services and servers.
For integrated communication applications, such as those described above, server support needs to be provided. Media gateways provide the ability to switch voice media between a network and its access point. Using Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and fast-Internet cable technology, a media gateway converts, compresses and packetizes voice data for transmission back-and-forth across the Internet backbone for wireline and wireless phones. Media gateways sit at the intersection of the PSTNs and wireless or IP-based networks. One way for service providers to speed up their innovation processes and quickly launch new services is if they use a standards-based component model and container architecture, such as a Java™ based communications platform.
Today, all communications can be routed through computers. Widespread access to broadband Internet and the ubiquity of Internet Protocol (IP) enable the convergence of voice, data and video.